Movies: Past, present and future

Few were surprised when crowds packed into theaters in New York and Los Angeles this past weekend to see "The Tree of Life." Terrence Malick's movie about morality and mortality had an insanely high level of buzz coming in, and culture-vultures were invariably going to rush out on opening weekend. As my colleague Amy Kaufman reports, they did --about 35,000 of them, according to our informal calculation.

But successful niche openings can spell disappointment as much as it can spell mainstream success. In the coming weeks, the Brad Pitt-Jessica Chastain drama will roll out to hundreds of theaters, and in places with far less of a cinema-going tradition than the country's two largest cities. How will it fare? Here are five movies the "Tree" release could emulate, and the likelihood that it will follow a difficult or a hospitable path (or, yes, the way of nature and the way of grace).

"Black Swan": A film that defies categorization goes on to become a cultural phenomenon, spoofed on late-night television and discussed at seemingly every cocktail party. The film also improbably tops $100 million at the U.S. box office.Likelihood: The Natalie Portman ballet drama had sexiness and horror elements. "Tree"? Not so much.

"127 Hours:" Strong performances and striking natural imagery generate a lot of ink and awards talk. But after the hard-core film fans turn up, the mainstream is daunted by it, and the movie never really breaks out of the art-house ghetto.Likelihood: "Tree" seems to stand on this precipice; a few shots in the film even evoke "127." But for all the goodwill Danny Boyle generates, Malick exists on a different plane with many filmgoers, which should help.

"Midnight in Paris:" Woody Allen's recent hits ("Vicky Cristina Barcelona," "Match Point') have taken between $20 and $25 million -- a number that lies somewhere between art-house specificity and mainstream commerciality. His new one seems to be heading in that direction. Could "Tree" too?Likelihood: It's curious that two films so different -- one a whimsical entertainment and the other a heavy meditation -- are becoming the two independent hits of the season. In fact, so far their per-theater averages are almost identical. "Tree" could yet be seen as the more serious piece of art and lap "Midnight" -- or be seen as the darker of the two and fall short.

"Elephant:" A movie from an acclaimed American auteur with an impressionistic vibe wins the Palme d'Or and has the press breathless, but goes on to attract only the most hard-core cinemagoers. Likelihood: The big limited-opening suggests that "Tree" is at least over this hump. (It's reached nearly half of the "Elephant" box-office total already.)

"The Thin Red Line": Malick's most successful release to date generated scads of Oscar nominations and a very solid $36 million in domestic box office. Likelihood: "Tree" is garnering stronger reviews and is arguably more of a conversation piece -- but a film combining midcentury angst and the beginning of earthly life is not quite as digestible a genre as a World War II movie.

Terrence Malick left a lot of “The Tree of Life” footage on the cutting room floor. But the writer-director’s elaborate visual presentation of the birth of the universe and the origin of life may have a second life in an Imax documentary.

The publicity-phobic maker of “The New World” and “The Thin Red Line” has been developing a documentary called “Voyage of Time.” It was originally designed as a companion piece to “Tree of Life,” which opens in Los Angeles and New York on Friday. But the producers of “Tree of Life” were concerned that two films—one fiction, one not—covering similar ground might confuse audiences, and decided to push back “Voyage of Time” to an unspecified future date.

“It was important not to cannibalize ‘Tree of Life,’” says Bill Pohlad, whose River Road Entertainment financed “Tree of Life” and is one of the producers of “Voyage of Time.” “But we want to do it. He just has to find the time to do it,” Pohlad said of Malick, who recently completed photography and several reshoots on an untitled film starring Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams that is by one account even more experimental than “Tree of Life.”

“Voyage of Time” will be narrated by “Tree of Life” star Brad Pitt and display “the whole of time, from the birth of the universe to its final collapse,” according to a confidential outline for the film obtained by The Times. A team of more than 20 advisors will “ensure the film is both aesthetically unique and scientifically accurate.”

According to a treatment for the documentary, “Voyage of Time” will cover the first signs of life, bacteria, cellular pioneers, first love, consciousness, the ascent of humanity, life and death and the end of the universe.

The business plan, heavily illustrated with images of jellyfish, crocodile embryo, nebular clouds, a slot canyon in Utah and Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, includes testimonial letters from Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, who promises that “Voyage of Time” will “be a memorable combination of art and science that will inspire as well as educate.”

In the coming weeks, there will be plenty of chances to gauge the mainstream appetite for Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life," the story of God and nature and one mid-century family's issues among them, which opens in limited urban release this weekend before expanding in the following week to suburban precincts.

But Sunday's news out of the Cannes Film Festival that the movie had won the Palme d'Or -- one of the few festival prizes to draw universal respect -- raises a more immediate question: How much will the Croisette honor motivate filmgoers to turn out to see it?

The question of a Palme bump has been an interesting one in recent years. Foreign-language films are their own breed, but among English-language titles, the prize has had a limited but hardly insignificant effect on what we see.

Over the last 20 years, it's helped set the table for box-office hits such as "Secrets & Lies," "Fahrenheit 911" and "Pulp Fiction" -- at minimum facilitating momentum the movie already had, and in some cases actively putting it on the map. The average filmgoer may not know a Palme d'Or from a palm reader, but he or she is certainly acquainted with the media that respond to one.

On the other hand, the Cannes prize did almost nothing for "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" and "Elephant," both of which failed to break out of an art-house ghetto.

Certainly a host of factors played into all of these results. But the Palme does seem to help movies that contain big, bold premises (including "Secrets & Lies," about interracial adoption). In that respect, "Tree," with its visual centerpiece featuring dinosaurs and colliding planets, would fit right in. (It's also worth noting that two of these three Palme hits were distributed by Harvey Weinstein, though "Tree" distributor Fox Searchlight is no slouch itself.) "Tree" also stars Brad Pitt, who has shown himself capable of motivating a mainstream filmgoer to specialized fare.

At Cannes, several involved in the international distribution of "Tree" shook their head ruefully when the subject of the film's U.S. fate came up. Romania and France, the thinking went, stood a far better shot of fielding a hit. But of course the odds are always long when you have material as abstract -- and as resistant to being boiled down -- as this. A Palme just makes those odds a little bit shorter.

With the major awards handed out and the last of the cinephiles, partiers, salespeople and hangers-on finally packing up for calmer climes, let's take a moment to look back at this year's Cannes Film Festival in all its intensity and strangeness.

The 2011 edition of the world's most prestigious film gathering was historic in several ways. Egyptian directors banded together to create and premiere shorts about their country's revolution just three months after it happened, while more female directors landed in the main competition than ever before (a sharp contrast to Hollywood's glass ceiling).

Less nobly, for the first time in the history of Cannes, a filmmaker was declared persona non grata at the festival. Leave it to Lars.

It was, as might be expected with any 64th installment, sometimes a festival of the familiar — Harvey Weinstein spending millions on high-profile films from the likes of Meryl Streep and Shia LaBeouf, and Woody Allen embraced again, thanks to his opening-night movie, "Midnight in Paris."

But it was also a festival filled with paradox. Cannes always contains multitudes, but the contradictions rarely have ever seemed this pungent, and they've seldom grabbed so many headlines. Cannes this year saw the European premiere of Mel Gibson's new film — and yet he had to settle for second place for the festival's biggest race-themed controversy. The Croisette also saw a silent film, Michel Hazanavicius' "The Artist," making some of the loudest noise.

There was good and bad, strange and sane, in this year's Cannes. It's the favorable more than the dodgy one hopes will prevail, though in the end it will may well be that both co-exist. It was, after all, that kind of festival.

Perhaps it was inevitable, after all the hype about the movie's brilliance and Oscar potential, that "The Tree of Life" ended up where it has: in a place where it still got a decent enough Cannes reception but hardly a stellar or flawless one.

Or perhaps it was just one more strange turn for a movie that was slated to be here a year ago, before its eccentric director continued a tweaking process that had already gone on for years.

In case you haven't been following, the much-anticipated "The Tree of Life" premiered to a mixed response from the tuxedoed set on the Croisette Monday night. According to the standard by which many Cannes films are measured, it didn't fly that well. The post-screening clapping lasted just a few minutes -- as opposed to the 10 or 12 minutes that's the mark of an unequivocally well-received Cannes screening (as there was for silent film "The Artist" the night before). Whatever the final verdict on the film, there was a bit of a deflated feeling in the room, owing in part, probably, to the way it had been inflated in the first place.

Not helping in all of this (apart from the 2-hour, 18-minute running time and grandiose imagery that seemed to make some restless) was the absence of Malick himself. Sometimes when a director stays out of sight it can add to the mystery. Sometimes it can do the opposite, making it seem as if he or she is indifferent to public reaction. And sometimes it just seems weird. It was probably a little of the second and a lot of the third that obtained Monday night.

Malick had actually come to this beach town a few days ago and in fact went to dinner both on a previous night and the night of the screening after the movie ended. But he doesn't like crowds or the spotlight, according to several who know him, so he stayed away from the Palais des Festivals during the film's premiere. (A Fox Searchlight spokesman later said that he did come in to the room after the movie screened while the audience was applauding, but covertly.)

Star Brad Pitt and romantic partner Angelina Jolie took a dramatic walk toward each other on the red carpet, epitomizing the kind of glitz this film festival does best. But inside the theater, the mood was cool after the helmer decided to stay away.

Malick's invisibility meant that the ceremonial post-screening bow in front of the crowd -- an oddly important ritual that can reinforce and even offer a window into a film's appeal -- did not happen. Instead, a camera that normally spotlights the filmmaker showed an empty chair presumably reserved for Malick. It was as though something awful had happened to him, even though almost everyone in the theater believed he was just fine, walking somewhere, incognito, on the streets outside the theater (or inside the theater, amid the crowd, as it happened).

All this comes after an earlier screening for media on Monday, when some boos greeted the final scenes before giving way to a generally hearty applause.

Of course, festival reaction is hardly an accurate predictor of commercial success, no matter how warm or cold. The movie will face its true box-office test when Fox Searchlight rolls it out in the U.S. on May 27, while other distributors release in other countries around the same time (though look for ongoing drama in Britain, where a battle over the release date has resulted in legal action involving the distributor and currently no release date in the country).

As for the larger state of Malick ... in the cycle of film-festival receptions, it feels like we're somewhere between the backlash and the backlash to the backlash. The relentless hype of this movie as a transcendental masterpiece really couldn't continue, but until the movie opens, we won't quite be at the point yet when Malick defenders come out to argue their case.

It's hard not to think, when all is said and done, that a number of cinephiles will hail this as a masterpiece, while the masses, at least in the U.S., may need a little more convincing. As for Malick himself, whatever anonymous Cannes street he's currently taking all this in on -- or, perhaps, just pleasantly observing a flock of seagulls -- it's hard not to imagine him wondering how we got to this place, where his movie failed to meet expectations he didn't mean to put on it.

With Terrence Malick's long-awaited "The Tree of Life" unveiled in Cannes on Monday morning, his stars and producers came out to talk about the film. But in keeping with his off-the-radar persona, the director himself was nowhere to be found.

Actors Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain anchored a press conference in which they and producers for the first time in a public setting answered questions about the unusual process of shooting this film and occasionally attempted to explain why the man of the hour wasn't present at the press conference.

Longtime Malick producer Sarah Green began by answering a moderator's question about the absence of the filmmaker as well as costar Sean Penn. "Mr. Malick is very shy," she said, adding that he "believe[s] that his work speaks for itself." (Another producer, Bill Pohlad, said Penn was just traveling up from Haiti and would be on the Croisette shortly to promote his other Cannes film, "This Must Be the Place.")

But a little further into the press conference, reporter Chaz Ebert (wife of Roger, who is not in Cannes this year as he finishes his memoir) pressed the panelists, asking if it was at all odd that the director wasn't there to speak for the film he had spent decades putting together. Didn't he feel, she asked, that he had a responsibility to serve as an ambassador for his movie, especially at a director-friendly place like Cannes?

That prompted Pitt, who gamely fielded questions for the better part of an hour, to offer a publicity-agnostic point of view. "I don't know why people who make things in our business are expected to sell them. I don't think that computes with [Malick]," Pitt said. The actor went on to compare the absence to a man who designs houses not being forced to deal with a real-estate transaction, or to any creator who prefers to stay out of the fray. "It's an odd thing for an artist to sculpt [something] and then try to sell it."

He also said he thought hearing a director speak about a film could ruin the experience of watching it. "You know when you have a favorite band and you hear them talk about lyrics and you're immediately disappointed, and you can't listen to that song anymore?" he said.

Why a director is or isn't present at a film festival is rarely of interest to most people outside the festival's bubble. Still, it was either fitting or frustrating for some, after years of mystery and a movie that was itself mysterious, to find the man who created a work wasn't there to engage with them.

Just minutes before, "The Tree of Life" screening divided audiences; in at least one of the two theaters the film was being shown, some boos came up before the applause started. Then again, just as a public screening at a film festival can be a misleadingly positive affair, press screenings can be an insular and grumpy place. Two years ago, you could barely find a journalist enthused about "Inglourious Basterds," and we know how that turned out.

Pitt, Chastain and producers did go into some detail about the process of making "Tree," which was improvisational and aimed at capturing moments more than it was constructing scenes. The film was a "complete lesson in letting go of all control of what you expect any outcome to be," Chastain, who played nurturing mother Mrs. O'Brien, said. "You can't plan any moment in his films," she added, describing how Malick would shoot a character interaction and then be taken with a woodpecker or another moment in nature and quickly shift the camera there.

Pitt, who plays a stern father figure, called the process a "leap of faith. But that's the point," he said. "You know you're in good hands so it's not really that scary." The actor also talked about the movie's themes, particularly its connecting the story of the universe with one family's struggles and the process of growing up and/or raising a family. "I was surprised by the structure," which he said he found "quite ingenious, this marriage of the micro with the macro." He added, "I hope it speaks to all cultures [about] childhood and growing up and deciding who you're going to be as you go from a child to an adult."

Pitt, who by far fielded the most questions, struck a candid pose on a number of subjects, including religion. "I got my issues, man. You don't want to get me me started," he responded, only half-joking, to one questioner. He went on to say that although he understood that some found comfort in it, "I myself found it stifling."

Toward the end of the press conference, one reporter asked producers if, given the length of time it took to complete the movie, they ever felt that Malick needed to be more disciplined. Green jumped in quickly. "He's the most disciplined director I've ever worked with," she said. "He works days and nights and weekends," searching for the right shot or moment, she added. "He knows it when he sees it."

Even before the trailer hit the Web in December, many questions about the mysterious project had bubbled up. How much does Sean Penn's character actually speak? Is there really a dinosaur in the film, and how big is its role ? And what's the darned thing about?

In order, the answers are: not much (but his weather-beaten face says volumes); yes, and it's kind of an important part; and, finally, well, the last one is tricky.

Describing the film isn't easy because "Tree" rarely follows a conventional narrative path, and in fact contains only snippets of what most viewers would consider dialogue. And yet there are thousands of words that can, and likely will, be written interpreting Malick's shots. So here goes. (Incidentally, this isn't a review, but an impressionistic take on a movie whose first screening concluded just a short time ago. Also, note that there are spoilers ahead -- not in a traditional, the-butler-did-it sense; you couldn't spoil this film that way if you tried, but certainly in terms of the arc and individual scenes. And of course if you want to see for yourself, you won't have to wait much longer: Fox Searchlight releases the movie to theaters on May 27.)

The movie starts off with a tragedy in the small-town Texas family of Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien (Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain) circa the middle of the 20th century. The family learns of it by messenger, and we divine that one of their three children is now dead. Mother and father mourn the loss of the child in different ways, a function of their very different constitutions. Mr. O'Brien has some kind of solid, if unremarkable, 1950s job at an airport (though we later learn he always wanted to be a musician). Chastain's character, a devoted housewife, is a nurturing mother and almost angelic spirit, which stands in sharp contrast to her husband's stubborn and rage-prone personality.

When the news about the death comes, Mr. O'Brien responds by doing work around the house and lowering his head through the pain, while his wife takes walks into the woods, crying out to the heavens for an explanation. Their personalities bleed into their worldviews too, with the much-described conflict between his "nature" and her "grace" highlighted in the trailer.

There are some directors such as Oscar winners Woody Allen and Clint Eastwood who make a new film practically every year. And then there are those like Terrence Malick and Monte Hellman, who have gone decades between projects. Thankfully for cinephiles, both of them have directed new films and are the subjects of tributes this weekend.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is heralding Malick's return to the big screen May 27 with "The Tree of Life," starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, with "The Elemental Cinema of Terrence Malick." Sissy Spacek will be on hand Thursday evening for the screening of Malick's acclaimed first feature, 1973's "Badlands," in which Spacek and Martin Sheen play lovers on a killing spree in the 1950s. On tap for Friday evening is 1998's "The Thin Red Line," Malick's all-star World War II drama based on James Jones' novel. One of the film's stars, Jim Caviezel, will be on hand. Production designer and longtime collaborator Jack Fisk, who is married to Spacek, will talk about working with Malick on Saturday evening at the screening of the director's 1978 drama, "Days of Heaven," starring Richard Gere, Sam Shepard and Brooke Adams. http://www.lacma.org

Terrence Malick fans who don't want to wait until May 27 for the release of his new film "The Tree of Life" will have another option, at least if they live in Southern California.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has announced that it will hold a retrospective of Malick's four previous movies in the days ahead of the "Tree" opening. Titled "The Elemental Cinema of Terrence Malick," the program will screen Malick's movies and bring in collaborators to talk about working with the enigmatic auteur.

"Badlands," "The Thin Red Line" and "Days of Heaven" -- Malick's films from 1973, 1998 and 1978, respectively -- will screen on successive days beginning May 12, just as the Cannes Film Festival kicks off in the south of France. "The New World," the director's 2005 colonial drama starring Colin Farrell, will play the following week, on May 20. Malick himself is not expected to come to the screenings, though he will likely make his way to Los Angeles (he lives in Austin, Texas) for the film's premiere the week of release.

The highest-profile names who will come out for the Malick screenings are actors. Sissy Spacek, whose career vaulted to prominence after "Badlands," will appear to discuss the couple-on-the-run film on the 12th, and Jim Caviezel will do the same for the Oscar-nominated war picture "The Thin Red Line" one day later.

But one of the most in-the-trenches-Malick personalities will be on hand for the other two films. Production designer and longtime Malick cohort Jack Fisk -- who became Spacek's husband after the pair met on the "Badlands" set -- will be present for both "Heaven" and "New World," the latter of which will also bring out the movie's costume designer, Jacqueline West. Malick may be a mostly mysterious presence, but others will be outspoken on his behalf.

The Choose-Your-Own-Adventure conceit of the site asks viewers to decide between the way of grace (represented by the film's Jessica Chastain) and the way of nature (represented by Brad Pitt); the couple are the mother and father of the Malick stand-in who grows up to be Sean Penn. Users who click through can then sift through the Viewfinder-ish images and watch short clips from the film.

As we wrote a while back, Malick and cinematographer Emanuel Lubezki shot the film in a highly unconventional way, the fruits of which are on display here, particularly in the ethereal naturalist scenes. What's also starting to become noticeable is how much sound plays a role in the film's distinctiveness.

Searchlight Co-President Nancy Utley told 24 Frames in December that the company will build anticipation with a fanboy-esque campaign. "We're going to try to keep people interested by releasing a still or a clip, keep the ball in play with different glimpses along the way," she said.

It's not easy to market an art-house film as an event -- even the most commercial ones, such as "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," often become events after the fact. But the innate Malick interest and the mystery created by the marketing campaign is starting to give it that "Inception"-for-cinephiles feeling.